The Joy of Six 1360

"If Morgan can beat the BNP in Barking, goes the argument, then surely he can do the same for Reform in Britain too. Yet in all the coverage of McSweeney’s supposedly unique ability to slay the far right, through deploying tough messages on crime and immigration, almost nobody has actually bothered to check whether it’s true." Adam Bienkov explodes the founding myth of Morgan McSweeney.

Nandi Msezane says migrant workers prop up the UK’s social care system, but are now being forced out.

Cameron Joseph argues that Donald Trump is borrowing a playbook from other elected leaders who have used the tools of democracy to destroy it: "Would-be autocrats often move to eliminate structural checks on their power. They intimidate opposition parties, threaten potential dissenters within their own ranks, and defy the courts. Autocrats punish and bully the news media, protect allies from legal prosecution while targeting political opponents, and purge senior military and government ranks of career staff in favor of loyalists."

"There were numerous attempts at creating Labour-affiliated clubs, as Labour became a serious party of government for the first time. It is also easy to see why the inherent contradictions around that gave these clubs a limited appeal within the Labour Party." Seth Thévoz on the attempts to establish a London club for Labour parliamentarians.

"It was a reminder of a time when democratic politics wasn’t viewed with contempt but was understood as a form of collective expression and - for some (for very many in the 1940s) - as a means of making a better world." Municipal Dreams looks at the at creation and reception of the 1943 County of London Plan.  

Katherine Stockton explores the problematic implications of Alan Bennett’s play The History Boys.

What happens when mainstream politicians talk up the far right's prospects: A warning from the Isle of Dogs

Copyright © Mike Seaborne

Chris Grayling has been talking to the Daily Mail.

"It will open the door to extremist populist political forces in this country of the kind we see in other countries in Europe," Mr Grayling told the paper. 

"If MPs who represent seats that voted 70% to leave say 'sorry guys, we're still going to have freedom of movement', they will turn against the political mainstream," he added. 

"There's already a nastiness and unpleasantness in our politics, more people with extreme views, more people willing to behave in an uncivilised way," he said.

In other words, MPs must allow Brexit or the far right will benefit.

When a politician resorts to this argument, it is always a sign of desperation and can end badly. Let me give you a little history lesson.

Back in 1993 the Liberal Democrats ran the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. And the Labour opposition had a problem.

For the second time in less than a year one of their councillors in the Isle of Dogs had resigned, which had done nothing for Labour's popularity in the ward. They were worried about holding the by-election.

The strategy they hit upon was to talk up the threat the BNP posed. People were told they had to vote Labour or they would let the fascists in.

I don't know if this was meant to fight of the BNP or to prevent the Liberals get a foothold in a ward where they had never done very well. But, either way, it proved a disaster.

The voters were looking for a way to punish Labour, and the Liberals would not do as a protest vote as they ran the council.

And the message the voters heard was that if they wanted to punish Labour the way to do it was vote BNP.

With the result that the BNP won the by-election.

As soon as they had done so, the Labour Party - locally and nationally - launched an assault on the Liberals, blaming their racist campaigning for the BNP's success.

I spent a morning delivering in the by-election and there was nothing wrong with the leaflet I was given, but that is beside the point here.

Because it was Labour's tactic of talking them up that did much to help the BNP to victoryin an area of traditional Labour strength.

Similarly, what voters who are angry about the way Brexit has gone will hear today is Chris Grayling telling them that they should turn to the far right.

What they should do is turn their anger on the mainstream Conservatives who made them impossible promises in the referendum campaign and have continued to do so to this day.

Chris Grayling is a good example of such a politician.

Lord Astor and Nottingham Labour play the BNP card

The Labour Party in Nottingham does not want the city to have a directly elected mayor. As part of their campaign in this week's referendum they issued a leaflet that begins:

The racist BNP & EDL want a £1M Extra Mayor. That's the only way they can win in Nottingham...

It features the BNP and EDL logos prominently, but does not mention the Labour Party at all.

Lord Astor (David Cameron's father-in-law) does not want the House of Lords to be reformed. In a speech in the Lords today he said:

"In fact Ukip could have more peers than the Lib Dems. Ukip stand to gain most and, the rather frightening thought, the BNP might for the first time be represented in Westminster. One would have thought that was the very last thing the coalition would want."

This use of the BNP as a bogeyman is unwise and dishonest. It is dishonest because, as things stand, there is no prospect of a BNP mayor being elected in Nottingham, as the Labour Party there well knows.

Perhaps the BNP could win seats in the Lords under a proportional system, but that is democracy. The way to beat the BNP is to take them on in argument, not to rig the electoral system against them.

And it is unwise because such tactics are the BNP's best recruiting sergeant. I remember working in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets by-election on the Isle of Dogs in 1993. It was the second by-election in the ward in short order caused by a Labour councillor's disqualification for not attending meetings.

To overcome this handicap, Labour hit upon the idea of running a scare campaign: vote Labour or the BNP will get in. But the voters were understandably out of patience with Labour and in those days the Liberal Democrats ran the council so were not a home for protest votes. So having been told that the BNP had the best chance of beating Labour, many voters went for the BNP and the party won the seat.

I don't suppose anyone listens to the ramblings of Lord Astor, but Labour should beware of talking up the BNP in Nottingham. These stupid tactics may be its only hope of making an advance in the city.

Six of the Best 229

Living on Words Alone is not impressed by a Liberal Democrat letter than raises the spectre of the BNP in an attempt to win votes. Certainly, things have rarely ended happily when Labour has tried this tactic.

Joe Paxton writes on Comment is Free about the experience of being unemployed in Britain today: "The Jobcentre has done nothing but hinder me in my search. When I was asked what qualifications I had, and I told them about my degree, Btecs, A-levels, AS-levels and GCSEs, they responded with "Are you sure? Have you got certificates to prove that?"

"Meanwhile my youngest (5) is being urged by the school to log into the computer at home to hear somebody reading a story to him. Clearly it is considered too much to ask us actually to read to our children ourselves." The Real Blog on the grooming our children to be online drones.

New Public Thinking has been set up in recognition of the fact that (pace the BBC) there are many interesting thinkers to be found outside the walls of the academy.

We Chelsea fans have come round to the idea that the team plays better when Fernando Torres is not in the team, but Alrick Brown has the figures to prove it.

Taking of the beautiful game, The Great Wen reprints a 1972 article about London's football gangs. It casts an unexpected light on the bookies' favourite to be England's next manager.

BNP London candidate is Falklands veteran - he fought for Argentina

The BNP has chosen Carlos Cortiglia as its candidate in next year's London Mayoral election. Cortiglia is a veteran of the war in the Falklands.

The only trouble is... he was fighting for the Argentinians.

Which rather reminds me of the late Bernard Manning:

While Manning's routine made little attempt to be topical, he could occasionally hint at subversion. 

As when, soon after the Falklands war, he told his audience that two soldiers from the conflict were present. 

As the jingoistic cheers rang out, Manning embarrassed the audience by adding: "They're Argentinians."

Elected police commissioners seem an increasingly bad idea

I have no fundamental objection to the introduction of elected police commissioners, and the police must be democratically accountable is some way, but I have never been clear what problem this initiative is designed to solve.

Now, if Michael Crick is right, comes news that the introduction of elected commissioners is to be bungled:

The Conservatives are seriously considering not standing candidates for the elections for the new elected police commissioners which are due to take place next May - providing the legislation gets through parliament ...

Rather than stand candidates under the Conservative banner, the party is actively considering instead whether to put its support behind other contenders, such as prominent and distinguished local individuals who decide to stand for the posts, perhaps as independents.

Local newspapers are full of loud-mouthed businessmen who announce that the local council is useless and that they will stand at the next election so that they can ensure it is properly run. Usually they are never heard of again. But it seems that they will now be backed by the Conservatives.

It is not fashionable to defend political parties, and every party finds it hard to find candidates these days, but we do need them to weed out the more obvious crooks and incompetents.

Instead it seems that the Conservatives are to abdicate this responsibility, while keeping the faintly anti-democratic philosophy that was behind the idea in the first place. As with elected mayors, they want someone who will knock heads together and get things done.

Meanwhile, Crick reminds us, the BNP and UKIP are certainly planning to fight police commissioner elections. The dangers are obvious and the Conservatives should drop the whole idea. At the very least, they should have the courage and nous to fight the elections they intend to land us with.

Liberal Democrats retain control of two Leicestershire councils

There was some consolation here in Leicestershire among the gloom of Thursday's local elections. The Liberal Democats retained control of both Hinckley & Bosworth and Oadby & Wigston district councils.

In Hinckley & Bosworth we lost one seat, as did Labour, and the Conservatives gained two. This means the make up of the new council is: Lib Dem 18, Conservative 15, Labour 1.

In Oadby & Wigston we gained two seats from the Conservatives making the balance of the new council: Liberal Democrats 23, Conservatives 3.

It is also worth noting that the BNP lost their two seats on North West Leicestershire.

Those Barnsley Central by-election candidates in full

The BBC News site has mini-manifestos from eight of the nine candidates standing in the Barnsley Central by-election on 3 March.

The full nine are:

• Dominic Carman (Lib Dem)
• Jane Collins (UKIP)
• Enis Dalton (BNP)
• Michael Davies (Independent)
• Tony Devoy (Independent)
• James Hockney (Conservative)
• Alan "Howling Laud" Hope (Monster Raving Loony)
• Dan Jarvis (Labour)
• Kevin Riddiough (English Democrats)

More about Dominic Carman on the Guardian site.

Harborough hustings cancelled over BNP protest fears

A Harborough constituency hustings due to be held at a school in Oadby this evening has been called off over "to prevent the risk of confrontation," says the Harborough Mail:

Chairman of the school governors Graham Wilson said the school had received about 30 letters and phone calls from concerned parents in the last few days.

He said there were also suggestions a text message was being passed around, plus Facebook and Twitter messages threatening an anti-BNP protest outside the event.

Mr Wilson said the school had raised its concerns with the event organisers, the Oadby Council of Churches, and they had decided to cacncel the event.

It is hard to judge the rights and wrongs of this from outside, but it sounds like an overreaction.

What is so sinister about "Facebook and Twitter messages"? If there is a demonstration, can't it be policed to ensure that the debate can go ahead?

This is a bad day for democracy in Harborough. And as far as combating the BNP, it is probably a counterproductive one too.

There are those on the left who, wary of the working class, believe that the BNP will do well if their views on race and immigration are given a hearing.

But the lesson of Nick Griffin's Question Time appearance was that his views on every other subject were so ridiculous that the more public exposure he and his followers get the better.

Labour talks up the BNP in Stoke

Not all is well with the Labour Party in Stoke-on-Trent.

The row over the selection of media don and Mandelson protege Tristram Hunt for Stoke-on-Trent Central is well documented, with the secretary of the constituency party now standing as an Independent against him.

Hunt, incidentally, is on Twitter as @hunt4stoke. I asked there the other evening whether this meant he was having trouble finding the constituency again.

More serious is the situation in Stoke-on-Trent South, where the sitting MP is using the familiar Labour trick of talking up the BNP.

The BBC News website quotes a letter Robert Flello has written (though it does not say whom he sent it to):

"I believe that councillors Terry Follows and Dr Zulfigar Ali [his Indpendent and Liberal Democrat opponents] are good men who work hard, but a vote for them is effectively a vote for the BNP.

"Independents and Liberal Democrats cannot win in Stoke-on-Trent, but they can take enough votes from Labour's traditional support to let the racist BNP sneak through."

"The only way to stop the BNP is to vote Labour."

I first became aware of Labour using this tactic in a Tower Hamlets council by-election then in the 1990s. The effect it had there was to give voters disaffected from the main parties the impression that the most effective way of getting back at them would be to vote BNP. And the BNP duly won the by-election.

Given the widespread anti politics mood at present, it is extremely dangerous for a sitting MP to tell his constituents that the best way to get rid of him is to vote for the BNP.

And, given the arrogance and poor judgment that Flello displays in his letter, you can hardly blame them from wanting to get rid of him.

So not a jolly good Flello then. If the BNP does well in Stoke, he will have to bear a large part of the blame.

Nick Griffin is allergic to rhubarb

Trivial Fact of the Day comes courtesy of politics.co.uk.

And congratulations to Dominic Carman.

Six of the Best 9

1. MTPT (a Liverpool Conservative - they should have him stuffed) has a fascinating post on the background to Luciana Berger's travails as the new Labour PPC for Liverpool Wavertree.


2. Talking of travails, Liberal Bureaucracy keeps us up to date with the latest goings on in Liberal Youth.


3. Still, things are far worse in the Socialist Workers Party, where everyone is resigning. Solomon's Mindfield has the details. Let us pause a moment to remember the wise words of Nick Cohen: ""Like a minor public school, the SWP is a home for dim, middle-class children."


4. Miserable Old Fart asks if all those doctored versions of Tory posters on the net are doing more harm than good - assuming you want to do Cameron down, that is. The picture above, borrowed from this post, makes the point.


5. Will there be a BNP candidate in your constituency at the next general election? Vote No to the BNP has the list so far.


6. On a happier note, Arts & Entertainment Journalism reviews this week's BBC4 documentary on Skippy: Australia's First Superstar.

A North West Leicestershire by-election?

Ashby Castle

When Gwyneth Dunwoody died in April 2008 Labour whips moved the writ for a by-election before she had been buried. They have not shown the same alacrity following the death of David Taylor, the MP for North West Leicestershire, whose funeral took place earlier today in the village of Heather.

I imagine Labour, afraid of defeat at the hands of the Conservatives, will do all they can to avoid having a by-election in North West Leicestershire before the general election. Certainly, I sense no enthusiasm for one amongst Labour activists in the county.

The North West Leicestershire constituency was created out of parts of the old Loughborough and Bosworth seats. It was first fought at the 1983 general election when David Ashby won it for the Conservatives. Ashby, whose antics did so much to enliven the the final years of John Major's premiership, held the seat until 1997. It was then gained for Labour by David Taylor, who had narrowly failed to capture it in 1992. (Ian Ridley has the results up to 1997.)

The constituency is quite rural, with two main towns: Ashby de la Zouch (just Ashby if you live in the county), which is thoroughly Tory, and Coalville, traditionally an area of Labour strength.

But things are more complicated than that. North West Leicestershire covers the former Leicestershire coalfield (the last mine closed in 1991), which means that many of the villages have a strong Labour tradition. And Coalville was won by the BNP in last year's county council elections.

The Liberal Democrats do not have much history of success in the constituency, but Michael Wyatt did have a good win in the rural Warren Hills ward in those same county elections.

To end on a literary note, fans of the Adrian Mole books may recall that his beloved Pandora Braithwaite is now New Labour MP for Ashby de la Zouch.

Question Time and Nick Griffin: They should have trusted us more

I did not watch much of Question Time, but then I rarely do. These days, if I am up late on Thursday evening, it is just a way of filling that annoying gap between Newsnight and This Week.

From what I saw Nick Griffin came over badly -and his "non-violent Klu Klux Klan" was priceless. But the usual format of the programme was changed because he was there.

Yes, many in the audience will have wanted to quiz him on his views. Yes, the other panelists were right to challenge him. His presence even seems to have woken David Dimbleby up.

But I am not sure we needed the ritual denunciations, such as the one from Jack Straw that opened the programme. There seemed an unwillingness to trust the audience in the hall or at home to draw their own conclusions. The result was that Griffin was made to appear a victim of the establishment, which is just the picture he tries to present.

It was notable that in answering the one normal Question Time question - on Stephen Gately and the Daily Mail - Griffin made a fool of himself. They should have given him more rope: he would have obligingly hanged himself.

As I said before Griffin appeared:

Left-wing intellectuals tend to distrust the working class, believing they are quite racist as enough as it is and fearing that they will be attracted to the BNP if they are allowed to hear from them.

The more publicity Nick Griffin gets the better

How is the BNP leader handling his extra public exposure in the run up to his appearance on Question Time?

Yesterday he:

• likened Britain's leading generals to Nazi war criminals;
• went on Newsnight to attack the British Legion;
• issued a press release that was clearly libellous.

A couple of weeks of that and he have succeeded in destroying himself in public.

The serious point is that the "No Platform" tactics of the left have clearly failed. The people voting BNP are not disgruntled Tories who wish their party were more racist, they are disaffected former Labour voters who have been hit by globalisation and hear the mainstream parties saying nothing that will help them.

Left-wing intellectuals tend to distrust the working class, believing they are quite racist as enough as it is and fearing that they will be attracted to the BNP if they are allowed to hear from them.

This is nonsense. The way to take on the BNP is to defeat them in debate and at the ballot box. Denying them a hearing only feeds the belief that they are telling the truth and the public is being kept from hearing it by a cosy political establishment.

BNP leader to attend palace garden party

Queen: Have you come far?

Griffin: No, but this goose step doesn't half take it out of you.

Neil Kinnock talks up BNP chances in attempt to save Brown

What is the last resort of the Labour party?

Trying to scare the voters by talking up the chances of a British National Party victory.

Neil Kinnock offers a novel twist on this tactic in today's Guardian by using the BNP threat against Labour MPs:

The former leader of the Labour party Neil Kinnock has warned Labour MPs that further undermining of Gordon Brown's leadership would boost the British National party (BNP) in the European elections.

After a weekend in which senior Labour figures struggled to end speculation about whether Brown should continue to lead the party, Kinnock called on MPs to "get behind Gordon" and denounced talk of a leadership challenge as "ludicrous and damaging". He said tearoom plotting would "hand victories" to the BNP in the elections on 4 June.

Labour used this tactic to try to scare the voters in a Tower Hamlets council by-election on the Isle of Dogs in September 1993. (I know because I did some delivering in that campaign.) The result was that the first BNP won their first seat anywhere in Britain.

Incidentally, Labour would do well not to encourage Neil Kinnock to play too prominent a role in British politics. I am convinced it was the British public's settled conviction that they could not face the prospect of five years of Kinnock as prime minister that brought John Major victory in 1992.

As Major once said: Kinnock didn't know what he was saying, so he never knew when he had finished saying it.